According to the article "Fly Higher, Fly Lighter: 'Ballute' Technology Aimed at Moon Missions" ( www.space.com/businesstechnology/techno ... 41201.html ) there is official R&D on a thin film ballute that will first cause an incoming spacecrfat to go into an orbit and then second decelerate it.

Could that be a solution for ASP vehicles too? Does it mean that Scaled and others are loosing the ASP?

Is this technology in the farther vicinity of the feather technique because its use of high drag in upper regions of the atmosphere or is it not?

Yes, I think this is similar to the feather. It looks like a very promising idea. Of course the devil is in the details. It remains to be seen if this works better than traditional heat shields, but am optimistic that it will.

Wow, very high potential! This is probably at least ten years away, if the devils can be disentangled from the details. I'm not sure how reusable this would be, and I'm dying to know what type of materials they're thinking of constructing the balute out of, though.

To add another comparison - can the ballute technology be compared to JP Aerospace's technology?

I ask this because JP Aerospace is using something between balloons and zeppelines and because their vehicle will be launched from their Dark Sky Station and is going very slow into the orbit - it needs a week to go there.

Balloon/zeppeline-like Dark Sky Station compares a little bit to a ballute having decelerated a vehicle sufficiently for safe reentry - the difference is altitude.

If I read this artical correctly the Russian have launched a spacecraft using a sea launched Volna missile from the Barents sea on a sub-orbital trajectory which uses a ballute. The Russsian design was financed by EADS and the spacecraft is yet to be recovered but the Russians have said that the ballute deployed correctly and the spacecraft detached from its booster (2 earlier attempts had failed). Assuming the craft is OK, is this the first successful use of a ballute?